The Art of Fugue: Schiff and Nosrati at the peak of their artistic powers ascend Bach’s musical ‘Everest’

United Kingdom BBC Proms 2025 [20] – J. S. Bach, The Art of Fugue: Sir András Schiff (piano), Schaghajegh Nostrati (piano). Royal Albert Hall, London, 23.8.2025. (CSa)

When describing Bach’s The Art of Fugue as ‘the greatest work by the greatest composer who ever lived’ Sir András  Schiff, the Budapest-born British concert pianist, conductor and pedagogue, has used many metaphors. He has compared it to a cathedral in which ‘every fugue is a room, an altar, a chapel … [in which] you must not linger too long but understand how each is part of the whole building.’ He has also likened it to ‘a meditation … in which the counterpoint is the prayer.’  More recently he has asserted that The Art of Fugue ‘isn’t just music -it’s the summit of Bach’s compositional achievements’. ‘I’ve waited 70 years to play this work … You cannot climb Mount Everest immediately … this is the climax’, he claims.

Schiff, widely regarded as one of the world’s greatest living exponents of Bach on the piano keyboard, was scheduled to embark on this gruelling musical expedition at a BBC Proms recital in September last year. Unfortunately, the trip was cancelled when a broken leg forced him to withdraw at the last minute. Now ambulatory and fully recovered he decided to make his ascent once again.

Generally believed to be Bach’s last work before his death in 1750, The Art of Fugue – a collection of 14 fugues and four canons built on a simple single theme – stands at the apex of eighteenth-century baroque composition, the peak of a lifetime’s mastery of musical architecture and imagination. Bach explores the theme in numerous ways through rigorous contrapuntal techniques. By inverting, augmenting, mirroring and overlapping a multiplicity of independent voices, he creates a vast, highly structured and mathematically intricate musical tapestry in which variations on one subject are woven together in elaborate counterpoint.

Some performers are tempted to treat the work as an uncompromising intellectual exercise stripped of sentiment, an emotionally-detached scientific study which prioritises machine-like precision and structure at the expense of warmth and lyricism. By contrast and while Schiff’s interpretation was notable for its crystalline clarity of expression, he never sacrificed the underlying humanity of the music. His mentor György Kurtág famously taught him ‘always to play [Bach] cantabile and not percussively’ and warned him ‘if you hit the piano, it hits [you] back’. Schiff obviously took this early lesson to heart and made each line sing and breath like a human voice.

Schiff’s performance style is highly disciplined and somewhat austere. He expects the same high level of concentration from his audience as he demands from himself. Known to disapprove of distracting ‘snake dancing’ keyboard performances favoured by some soloists, he sat undemonstrative and straight backed on the piano stool throughout the 90-minute recital, only occasionally leaning forward to peer at the sheet music. Keen to preserve purity of tone, and to avoid blurring textures, his foot barely touched the sustain pedal. Astonishingly, Schiff achieved a full palette of tonal colours solely through the delicate touch of his fingers on the keyboard.

Contrapunctus 1 unfolded softly and slowly, each of the four parts finely balanced and richly textured, while the lines of Contrapunctus 3, with its swelling Cathedral-like harmonies, were sensitively shaped. Glittery brilliance and deft linear interplay defined No.5. A grand and majestic Contrapuctus 6, written ‘in the French style’ was followed by an elaborate and intricately layered contrapuntal web in No.7. The hugely sophisticated demands of this fugue were dwarfed by those required in the last group. Contrapunctus 13 calls for no less than three simultaneous keyboard voices which must be articulated distinctly and carefully balanced. Although the piece is usually played by one instrumentalist, it is sometimes performed by two. On this occasion Schiff was joined by the German-born, award-winning Schaghajegh Nosrati, one of Schiff’s former students. Her outstanding contribution added yet another layer of rich polyphony and human warmth to Bach’s unfolding masterpiece.

In the 14th fugue, the unfinished culmination of the entire work, Bach introduces a theme based on his own name (B-A-C-H or B natural in German notation). He died before its completion. Schiff’s respectful exposition allowed the counterpoint to speak clearly but finished mid-phrase in enigmatic silence, rather than trying to ‘complete’ what Bach had not written. In yet another metaphor, Schiff has compared this evolving but incomplete fugue to an unfinished sculpture by Michelangelo. ‘Who in their sane mind would think to come with a hammer and chisel and start banging away?’ he has asked disdainfully about those who in the past have tried to ‘finish’ Bach’s masterpiece. The profound stillness and quiet that permeated the Royal Albert Hall at the recital’s end underscored what Schiff has sometimes described as the sacred space that silence creates for musical expression. It felt as if many prayerful minutes had passed before an eruption of applause and a standing ovation from the capacity Proms audience. Physically drained but spiritually triumphant, Schiff held Bach’s manuscript aloft, like a flag. His mountainous journey complete, he had succeeded in taking us all to the summit.

Chris Sallon